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Gunpowder, treason and York

Marianka Swain explores the birthplace of Guy Fawkes, and separates fact from enduring myth

York

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R emember, remember, the fifth of November” rings out across Britain, as notorious plotter Guy Fawkes is burned in effigy on

Bonfire Night. His part in the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot still echoes through history, but have we judged him too harshly?

Guy Fawkes was born in York in April 1570, on the corner of Stonegate and Petergate, where the Guy Fawkes Inn now stands. He grew up in the shadow of the Gothic cathedral York Minster, boasting the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in Britain, and his grandparents and father were buried in its churchyard. Surprisingly, given his later affiliation, Fawkes’s

immediate family were Protestants: he and his sisters were baptised in the 16th-century St Michael le Belfrey Church, which today features a facsimile of his baptismal entry. His father was a proctor and advocate at the Archbishop’s consistory court, and died when Fawkes when eight.

His mother had established Catholic sympathies through her family – which included a Lord Mayor of York and a Jesuit priest – and she subsequently married recusant Catholic Dionis Baynbridgge from nearby Scotton, Harrogate, in 1579.

Fawkes converted to Catholicism as a teenager, possibly swayed by his new family or contact with the prominent Catholic

Pulleyn and Percy families in Scotton. From 1582, he attended St Peter’s School in York with brothers John and Christopher “Kit” Wright, who later joined the Gunpowder Plot, and future priests Oswald Tesimond, Edward Oldcorne and Robert Middleton.

St Peter’s had strong Catholic leanings, with a school governor sentenced to 20 years in prison for recusancy and John Pulleyn as its headmaster. Today, Fawkes’s school – the third oldest in the UK – loyally refuses to burn a guy on Bonfire Night.

The Pearl of YorkBut Fawkes would not have needed contact with specific individuals to fuel his Catholic

sympathies: his home city was teeming with gruesome tales. York’s All Saints Pavement church houses the replicas of the helmet, sword and gauntlets of Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland, who led the failed 1569 Rising of the North to depose Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots.

Percy was captured and beheaded at a public execution outside All Saints, without trial, making a passionate profession of his faith that was said to have inspired Margaret Clitherow, “the Pearl of York”. She risked her life by harbouring Catholic priests and, though pregnant, was arrested, held in Kidcotes Prison, and then put

Clockwise, from left: The Shambles hide a violent past; All Saints Pavement; the street’s overhanging design protected the meat traded there; the Guy Fawkes Inn; St Michael le Belfry; the plot is discoveredPrevious page: A 19th-century wood engraving of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators

“Contrary to popular opinion, the conspiracy was not masterminded by Fawkes, but by the charismatic Robert Catesby”

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to death by pressing on Ouse Bridge on Lady Day, 1586. This brutal treatment of a woman was condemned by Elizabeth I.

Margaret was canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI, and a relic – said to be her hand – is housed in York’s Bar Convent, the oldest surviving Catholic convent in England. Mary Ward, a relative of future plotters the Wright brothers, inspired its secret founding in 1686 when it was still illegal to practise the religion – the convent featured eight escape routes and a hiding hole in the floor.

There is also a shrine to St Margaret on the Shambles, the butchers’ street – her husband was a butcher, and their house contained the priest hole that sealed her fate. The street name derives from the Anglo-Saxon fleshammels (“flesh-shelves”), referring to butchers displaying their meat (the top-heavy architectural design was said to shelter the meat which was displayed on the window sills). Today it is hard to imagine that one of Britain’s quaintest thoroughfares,

which is crammed with tearooms and shops, was the scene of so much bloodshed.

Royalty and religion The religious tensions of the time were reflected in the great buildings of York. Powerful St Mary’s Abbey was sold off and stripped by King Henry VIII to fund his war with France, and when 35,000 pilgrims marched through York demanding a return to the rule of the Pope – the “pilgrimage of Grace” of 1536 – the King executed leader Robert Aske and hung his body in chains from Clifford’s Tower as a warning. When Fawkes was growing up, the once great abbey had been reduced to a quarry.

The St Mary’s abbot’s house became King’s Manor, housing the Council of the North – which weeded out Catholics and secret priests. Henry VIII visited in 1541, inspiring the name, and King James VI of Scotland stopped in on his way south to become King James I of England in 1603. A shield above the entrance is a symbol of unity – the lion represents England, the unicorn, Scotland, in Charles I’s coat of arms – but concord was a long time coming.

As well as teaching Fawkes the harsh lessons of Protestant rule, York demonstrated the consequences of rebellion. Micklegate Bar, the royal entrance to the city, was decorated with the severed heads of traitors skewered on pikes, including Thomas Percy and later another member of the Percy family, who joined Fawkes in the Gunpowder Plot.

The man behind the Guy Fawkes – by most accounts a pious, honourable and courageous man – sold off inherited land in Gillygate and Clifton (where St Peter’s School now stands) in order to enlist in the Catholic Spanish army aged 21. There, Fawkes developed a knowledge of explosives and met Thomas Winter and Kit Wright, with whom he joined forces to plan the assassination of King James – the increasingly intolerant monarch who declared his “utter detestation” of Catholicism.

However, contrary to popular opinion, the conspiracy was not masterminded by Fawkes, but by the charismatic Robert Catesby. Fawkes became the more renowned of the plotters because he was VI

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Top to bottom: The St Margaret Clitherow Shrine in York’s Shambles; the King’s Manor, now part of the University of York, was home to the Council of the North

“Today, Fawkes’s school – the third oldest in the UK – loyally refuses to burn a guy on Bonfire Night”

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the one who crept into the cellar beneath the House of Lords during the state opening of Parliament, on 5 November 1605, to light the fuse, and was thus caught red-handed with 36 barrels of gunpowder. He withstood two days of torture on the rack in the Tower of London before finally confessing and naming his co-conspirators.

But he was not hanged, drawn and quartered, as so many traitors had been: he escaped that fate by leaping off the gallows and breaking his neck in 1606. His body was still quartered, and sent to the four corners of the kingdom, but the king admired his “Roman resolution”. Catesby, meanwhile, was killed in a siege while trying to evade capture.

Following the Gunpowder Plot, anti-Catholic repression increased dramatically. In York, Catholics were under strict surveillance and more than 50 were imprisoned for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the king – 40 died in prisons at York Castle, Monk Bar and Ouse Bridge.

The plot’s legacyToday we remember Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot through the annual search of the Palace of Westminster’s cellars before the state opening of Parliament and, of course, with bonfires on 5 November. The latter began in 1605, with Londoners lighting fires in thanksgiving that their king had been saved; later celebrations added fireworks and effigies.

But does Fawkes deserve this fate? While it is impossible to condone a plot that would have ended in the deaths of so many, an exploration of York’s grisly history does, at least, explain what shaped the most famous of the Gunpowder Plotters and why he came to believe violence to be the most effective course of action – and a fitting revenge given the mistreatment of Catholics.

There are even shadowy theories that Jacobean spymaster Robert Cecil knew of the plot early on, or even engineered parts of it, in order to create anti-Catholic propaganda and justify the king’s actions.

Visitors to York Dungeon can meet Guy Fawkes and hear his story. But exploring the city that shaped him is perhaps the best way to decide whether the story of the infamous plotter should be reclaimed this November. n

For more on Yorkshire’s highlights, see www.discoverbritainmag.com/yorkshire

Top to bottom: The royal entrance to the city, Micklegate Bar, displayed the heads of traitors during Fawkes’s lifetime; the famous plotter grew up in the shadow of the monumental York Minster cathedral

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